What You Think You See
looking out my dorm room window with L.
“You’re that girl who walks around her room naked,” the guy said.
“What?” I asked. For dinner I’d agreed to sit with a friend at his fraternity table. I didn’t know the guy asking the question.
“You live on the 6th floor,” he said. “Facing our dorm.”
The other guys looked at me. “That’s not me,” I said.
“That’s you?” said another guy.
“No. It is not,” I said. My friend laughed. “It’s probably the girl next door to me,” I said. She looked a lot like me. She was the type to walk around her room without any clothes on and the curtain open. Though that felt unfair to say.
“I know it was you,” the guy said. “It’s cool, you know.”
My face burned red. I didn’t know how to convince he was wrong. I didn’t want to tell the truth–I would never have just walk around my room like that. I didn’t want to sound like a prude. But I didn’t want to sound that… carefree either.
“You think what you want,” I said.
When you read a novel, how much does it influence how you see the author? After reading Stephen King, what do you think about him? Or Margaret Atwood? Nora Roberts? JK Rowling? Neil Gaiman? Mark Twain? Put your favorite author here. How much of a novel should you apply to its creator?
Does knowing about a writer’s real life help or hurt your reading of her fiction? When you share your work, do you ever worry how it will reflect on you?
because it is awesome
How does a video like this make you feel? Bored… Connected… Inspired… Creative… Would you try something like this? Why not?
Thanks to Dennis Cass!
Did I hear you correctly?
on a day trip with a student in Bulgaria
“Are you a virgin?” he asked. He was a 15 year old student.
“Excuse me?” I said. I was 25 and a new teacher. I put the cookie I’d just picked up back on the plate.
“Are you a virgin?” he asked.
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Um, I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand your question.”
“I’m a Scorpio,” he said. “Are you a Virgin?”
I dropped back into the chair. “Virgo,” I said. “The word you want is Virgo. And no. I’m a Libra.”
You put your work out into the world and maybe you ask for feedback. You never know how another person takes the question. Or takes your story for that matter. You might be embarrassing yourself in a way you don’t even know. That’s reassuring, isn’t it?
When you ask for feedback, what do you really want to hear?
Disturbing Sensations
C., K., and I try to light old sparklers
The pain sent me straight to my knees. I rolled to my side. My eyes watered.
“You want me to stop?” K. asked.
I shook my head and got back up. “It’s okay,” I said. K. and I were 14. The stud earring she’d pushed through my earlobe had gone through only one layer of skin. The little gold star jutted out and blood seeped around the post.
K. held the towel on the other side of the earlobe and pushed the stud further in. I shrieked. I heard the post break through the cartilage. K. jumped back. “Maybe we should stop.”
I shook my head unable to speak. I wiped away the tears, picked up an ice cube and touched it to my ear. Pain zipped down my neck.
She popped the stud through the back layer of skin. “You sure you want to do the other one?” she asked.
We did the other one.
All these years since then I’ve remembered how much it hurt and the sound of pierced skin. To this day I’ve no idea why I insisted on continuing.
The other day K. told me that she remembered the feeling of pushing that earring into my earlobe as if it were yesterday instead of 25 years ago. The sensation disturbed her still. How she felt had never occurred to me.
Now that I’ve sent my novel out into the world, I’ve no idea how readers will feel about it–though I hope not like they’re pushing a metal post through flesh. We tend to focus on how we feel about sending it out, but what effect will our words have on others? But we can’t predict and will be surprised by what people say.
I think I’d rather get any reaction than having the words quickly forgotten. Some novels I forget almost before I put them back on the shelf.
How do you want a reader to feel while reading your work? What do you want a reader to remember?
Celebrate Independence Day–Burn Your Book
cavorting in enemy territory--me in London--Happy 4th of July
“You should be speaking Bulgarian,” the man said.
A group of us Peace Corps volunteers were on the train into Sofya, Bulgaria. And we’d been talking in English. We got quiet.
The man puffed up a bit more. “You in our country. You speak our language.”
One of us tried to tell him we took Bulgarian language classes. We had tutors. We did speak Bulgarian. But we were with friends.
“You come here. You think you do what you want. You think we small country. You must show respect.” He gave us all one more good glare before he marched off out of the compartment. It took a few moments for any one of us to speak again, and when we did we lowered our voices.
This happened a year into our two-year service. A year earlier when I’d been in country for only a week, I met a different old man on the train. He was very old and well-aged by hard work in hard weather. He asked us where we were from. Then he cried. “I have lived this long,” he said, “to see when Americans are in my country.” He touched our hands. “I am happy.”
And we–our stupid 24 year old selves–sat there and stared at him unable to think of anything remotely equal to his emotion.
Getting out of your country provides the chance to see your country in a new way. Just getting out of your hometown can show friends and family in a new way too. Getting away from your story may reveal more than you want to see.
Sometimes I feel so attached to my own writing, I could never put it away. The story rules my life. The characters invade my privacy. They demand attention. I put in all this work and it will never count. And yet I want it to take over my life. I have no control and I’m happy.
Other times I want to burn the manuscript and be free. Torch it. Shoot it. Deny its existence. Forget I wrote anything, please.
Happy Independence Day. How free from your writing should you be?
There Are No Words
showing off dad's catch
I am 7 years old, standing on the dock, looking out at my father. He is waist deep in the lake and holding a fishing pole. The sun is getting low and he’ll come in soon. I am supposed to be with the babysitter up at the house.
I hate the babysitter. An empty lot separates our houses. It is easy for her to babysit and she is sixteen, I think. Maybe she isn’t. But she’s old enough.
“What are you doing down here?” dad asks.
I want to tell him, but I’m sure I will get into trouble. “I don’t like B—,” I say. My temperature rises.
“Don’t be silly,” he says. “Why do you say that?” He reels in the line.
I don’t know how to tell him. I can’t. I stare out at the water. The sun turns it gold, flickering with small waves. “I don’t know,” I say. “My stomach hurts.”
“Go back to the house.”
“I don’t want to. B—… she says means things.” The sun makes me blink and I rub my eyes.
“Just do what she says,” my dad replies and casts out his line. “Don’t make her mad.”
I decide I will walk up to the house, but I won’t go inside. I will stay in the backyard until B— goes home. I will never tell my father what she says to me.
What she says to me is how her and her boyfriend have sex. She laughs and tells me her boyfriend is going to come over to my house if I am not good.
Later that summer I take her cat and shut it up in my dad’s steamer trunk. The cat shreds the lining and then claws up my hands when I let it out. B— asks me why her cat is acting so strange, so on edge, and I shrug. I feel terrible though every time I open that trunk. And my father is furious.
“What were you thinking?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
In fiction we write terrible things. What difficult scenes do you write? Death, murder, rape, fear, grief, heartbreak, failure, torture? Maybe the horrors you write about are small ones–though the word small is deceptive. There is the epic death of an entire village in war and the small death of a child’s goldfish. But you can’t tell the real story if you mock the child’s loss.
Anyway, how do you write difficult scenes? Or are they easy for you? The other day I watched an episode of Torchwood with my students. In one scene, a man in murdered in front of his wife and children. Every time I watch this I look away. The first time I watched it I started to shake. But one of my students–he laughed. Like he knows it is just a tv show and I forgot.
Why is that? Why do some of us laugh and some of us feel sick? How do feel if you write a scene like that?
Work the Room
this past Saturday with my art on the walls...
The women were in the kitchen. The men were in the living room. It was a wine tasting party and I was there because I was related to the hostess. Otherwise, I didn’t know these women.
One of these women, an executive at Wal-Mart, was telling the other wives about how she screwed up her husband’s laundry so that he’d give her permission to quit work and stay home with the kids. All the women began talking about their husbands and the problems they had to get them to do one thing or another. They all had tricks to deal with these problems.
And I said, “The problem is that we’re in kitchen talking about them, but they aren’t in the living room talking about us.”
They quieted and looked at me. I took another sip of wine and looked at the countertop. They resumed their conversation as if I hadn’t said anything. I polished off that glass of wine and poured another. I said nothing else.
If you want to take your fiction or your art out into the world these days, you can’t play Salinger. You have to get out and socialize, network, pitch, and be on. Recently I had an artist–someone who makes his living with his art–tell me that when he meets people, he’s playing a role. He’s the artist they want him to be. “Some people want to know they are talking to an artist,” he said.
Do you think this is true? Can you network and socialize with anyone and everyone? In what social situations do you shine and in what situations do you disappear? Or dread? Do you say the right thing, the wrong thing, or nothing at all?
No One Understands What You’re Saying
grandma and jill
For years my grandmother worked at the edge of an orange grove in a wooden shack built on blocks and painted red. Spiders were always scuttling down the walls and grove workers milled about outside. She kept the books. Every morning she dressed for the office, sat with perfect posture all day long, and smoked.
She never complained, and the men all called her ma’am and someone made sure fresh flowers were on her desk.
At least, that’s the way it was whenever I went there with her. And she never said whether she liked this life more or less than her life as a dancing girl, walking down stairs on stage in feathers and beads.
As best I remember my grandmother complained about only three things, the waitress bringing her a full cup of coffee when she’d asked for a half, whether or not I was standing up straight, and my mother.
I couldn’t understand what the complaint actually was. She’d hear or see something my mom had done, and my grandmother would place a hand over her heart and mutter my mom’s name.
If my mom saw this, she’d start shouting, and every time I would listen. I’d take apart every sentence and try to understand. I knew they were fighting about something they weren’t saying, but try as I might, I couldn’t find the real problem.
When I was old enough to ask, their answers hide more than they revealed. People can hide so much in what they say.
Characters have to do the same. Miscommunication, hidden agendas, lies, twisted truths, hurt feelings, anger, love, secrets–all are in the dialog. But sometimes I worry my dialog is too opaque. Confusing, not intriguing. Unrealistic, not compelling.
How can you be sure you’re keeping your characters interesting–and not making them into a collection of verbal ticks and unbelievable ideas?
Everyone’s Listening But I Can’t See
posing
Professor X is the most popular professor in the English department. Students want his attention, but his quick opinions scare me. I try to stay out of his way. –which is easy since he isn’t aware I am in his class.
I am walking down the hall when he notices me. He calls out my name and marches over. His sweater is unraveling on the edges and he needs new loafers. I hug my books to my chest. “Yes, Dr. X?”
He tells me about the faculty lunch. Would I read three of my poems? He tears off a corner of one the papers and scrawls the day, time, & location down. I nod. You don’t say no to Professor X and I’m flattered anyway.
When I’m introduced to the room, I’m standing with a group of English majors. They aren’t really my friends. I don’t have many English major friends.
I take a step towards the podium. And a moment later I’m standing next to a classmate again. He says, “Great job. See? You had nothing to be nervous about.”
I frown. “What?”
“You did great!”
“Is it over?” I ask. “Did I read them? All three of them?”
He looks at me funny. “Of course you did. Just now.” The pages in my hand are shaking and he laughs. “You’re still nervous?”
I don’t answer him. I’m trying to remember reading my poems and all I can remember is darkness. Other people come over to me and say nice things. I nod and nod. “You didn’t even look nervous,” they say. “You were great.”
Twenty years I’m getting ready to read my work in front of a room of people again (though not poetry, thank god). Even when I practice in my living room, the lights go dim.
How do you feel about being up in front of people–with your own work? Do you look forward to reading your own writing for others or not?
This Conversation Needs a Writer
with dad & the third wife
“She’ll think you don’t like her,” my dad said.
I was on my way out the door. I had a date and I hadn’t had a date in a year. I bit the inside of my cheek. “What do you mean?” I asked him.
“A– will think you don’t like her,” he said. A– was his live-in girlfriend (and now she is his wife).
“She’ll think I don’t like her because I left my purse on the kitchen table?” I said. A– and I got along well. Everyday I reminded Dad of this.
“You don’t want her to think you don’t like her,” he said.
“What if,” I said, my stomach churning because I knew I was about to say something I wasn’t allowed to say. “What if my feelings were hurt because I wasn’t allowed to leave my purse on the kitchen table?”
My dad frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. I just don’t want you to hurt A–’s feelings.”
“Fine. I’ll be more careful. Now, I have to go.” I head toward the door.
“Don’t forget to tell A– good-bye.”
In my dress shoes I stomped through the garden, around to the back of the house, past the pool, and to the shed. “Bye, A–,” I said. She was watering flowers.
“Don’t you have a date?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then what’re doing back here?” She shot water at her rose bushes.
“Dad, wanted me to be sure to tell you bye,” I said.
She tilted her head. “Why? What’s he thinking? You got a date–don’t listen to your dad.”
In your own life, what people really mean when they speak (and the words they actually use) can drive you mad. I thought I knew what my father really meant–prove to me you’re not going to ruin this relationship of mine like you did my second marriage. You know those veiled conversations you have with family that no bystander can grasp.
Maybe I was wrong about what he really meant. Not like I’ll ever know.
I love writing dialog in fiction. I know what every character means, and I can make them say what I want. They can be clever or obtuse. They can evade or be blunt. I can play with the line until it is missing just the right part to make the other character mad. Or fall in love. Or whatever I please.
I love power over words. Which isn’t to say I’ve come close to mastering that power, but I keep trying.
If you could hire any writer to write a dialog for your life, who would you hire? Do you think it would help to have a writer tell you what to say?
